Commander Hadfield, who sports a truly impressive Marlboro Man mustache, sings his heart out from an actual tin can floating far above world, which we see behind him out the window. Understandably, he changes the lyrics. Bowie's Major Tom won't make it home; he's lost in space; he loses Ground Control; that's where the song's magic happens. But we feel the original lyrics even as Hadfield sings his happier version.

Commander Hadfield's cover, like the kids' versions of Queen and Green Day, belongs to a recognizable genre of songs that start out as one thing — outsider songs, songs of rebellion and alienation — but end up in a very different cultural location.

Compare Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA," which is an angry song reflecting despair at the economic and social hardships of post-Vietnam America, but that has wound up, in the cultural imagination, as a sort of patriotic rallying-cry.

Readers, what are some other songs that have changed their meaning in this way?

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